What is Meta Data and how should you use it to get better Google ranking?

Meta Data is information included on a web page that is about the web page itself. This helps searchers (human as well as search engines such as Google) find the page that they want.

In this article I will talk about the big 3: Page Title, Description and Keywords

These Metadata tags tell the search engines what your site is about.

What Should You Put in Your Meta Data?

The Description, Key words and Page Title should reflect the content of the page/site. If you want your site to rank highly for particular searches then your content should be written with this in mind and then your Description etc. should follow from this.

Meta Description

The description is what appears in search results. On the home page this should describe your site. Other pages can either have the same description or, if pertinent, a description of their own.

The description should be less than 155 characters.

Meta Words

Meta Words are used by the search engines to help present relevant pages. These words or phrases should be representative of the content on each page. Again, you can have the same words on each page of your site or, if pertinent, their own words.

Consider 20 to 30 words.

Key words are less important now than they used to be (Google® puts more emphasis on content). Please read my article on How To Use Keywords for help on choosing the right words.

Page Title

The title of each page appears at the top of the browser window and is another source of information that Google^® uses for its search matching. This should be representative of the content of each page. As for the description and keywords, this can be the same as the home page.

The title should be less than 70 characters.

It makes sense to get your meta data correct but don't obsess over it!

Remember: Content is King!

You might like to read the article How to get better search results to see how people search!

Web Design